books

This is a beautifully written book that tells of the author's personal experience with God. His God is an intimate, loving God, not the God of punishment or judgment. The book is filled with lovely, personal anecdotes written with heart, many of them quite poignant. It's thoughtful, well-written and digestible. While you can read all the way through, it's also a book you can pick up and turn to a random page for inspiration and food for thought.

Beyond Human could be just another "think positive" Law of Attraction self-help book. Thankfully, it goes "beyond" simple "just think good thoughts" advice and provides some innovative tools and ways of approaching things that you might not have heard of before.

Right off the bat, the author, Jaden Rose Phoenix, sets herself apart by commenting on the lack of "out of the box" thinking that traps so many people in mediocrity. If more people took her advice on just trying new things to solve problems, the world would probably be a better place.

Doing Virtuous Business is about how the best businesses utilize spiritual principles to not only achieve success but make the world a better place. It's a compelling idea and one that we should, as a culture, explore further. The author comes at the subject as a devout Christian, and so much of the theory is based in Christian principles and ideals; however, he does endeavor to expand the playing field to other faiths.

Same Life, New Story by Jan Silvious is billed as a “10-Week Bible Study for Women” covering stories of women in the Bible and how they apply to life for women today. It’s not so much as a Bible study as it is a self-help coaching book for Christian women. It could also be used by spiritual-but-not-religious women who may be interested in applying Christian concepts to their personal growth.

I went to church weekly as a child but never really knew much about women in the Bible. I guess our church never covered them that much, for whatever the reason. So I was interested in this book because of its focus on women in the Bible. I was curious to read their stories and hear how they might apply to me today. Would women of the Bible be inspiring to me? I wanted to find out.

The Final Summit by Andy Andrews is a self-help parable that seeks to answer the question: "What does humanity need to do, individually and collectively, to restore itself to the pathway toward successful civilization?" It attempts to do so through a fictional character who finds himself at a heavenly “summit” of time “travelers” who have been brought there by the Archangel Gabriel. Most of the “travelers” are famous people who are known for great accomplishments, except for the hero of our story, a normal man who found wealth and prosperity by learning life secrets through his previous time travels.

This leads us to the first problem with this book: It's actually a sequel, apparently, to a previous book. So it took me a little while to figure out what this whole “traveler” business was about. I left the book still not quite sure what the travelers were actually doing in traveling, or how it all worked, but I got the basic gist of it.